In the opening skit of the latest episode of NBC’s Saturday Night Live, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller hands Donald Trump a document to sign, assuring him: “Sir, this order will make it socially acceptable for a man in his 70s to date a 24-year-old.”

“That’s right,” replies Trump, “we’re calling it ‘The Belichick Law’. We’re going to make girlfriends young again, okay?”

As is standard with the world’s most overrated comedy show, the sketch wasn’t great, but the topic chosen certainly caught the mood of the American week. This country is currently obsessed with Bill Belichick, 73-year-old NFL coaching legend, being in a relationship with Jordon Hudson, a former college cheerleader almost half a century his junior. Even if every high-profile May-December romance inevitably inspires some degree of voyeurism, there’s lately been a morbidly compelling slow-motion, car-crash vibe to this relationship.

On the way to leading the New England Patriots to six Super Bowl victories this century, Belichick cut the dourest, most taciturn figure in American sport. Wearing a permanent sourpuss, he revelled in delivering one-word answers at press conferences, scowling and sulking about the place, often sporting a tattered hoodie that inspired comparisons with the Dark Lord of the Sith.

The image was fit for purpose. An inveterate rule bender, he had no time for frivolities like wardrobe or anything else not about ensuring his team won their next game. By any means necessary.

It’s difficult to reconcile that portrait in focused snark with the scarcely believable version of Belichick that now crops up on his partner’s Instagram. Of all places. Here he is dressed as a delighted fisherman on a beach snagging his girlfriend on his line as she lies on the sand, resplendent in full mermaid costume. There he goes stretched out on the strand as he helps her do yoga poses by holding her in the air with his own legs.

In the age of AI, the most hilarious aspect of these images is that they are not the work of some scurrilous deepfake operation trying to deride the martinet coach once nicknamed Doom. He is, apparently, a willing participant in these social media shenanigans.

Some might dispute that last part following the release of disturbing outtakes from a recent interview CBS News Sunday Morning conducted with him to promote his new book, The Art of Winning – Lessons From My Life in Football. These clips showed Hudson stopping filming and staging the sort of editorial interventions normally conducted by over-zealous PR handlers on behalf of callow movie stars promoting some popcorn flick.

The sight of grizzled Belichick, who ruled the Patriots as a not-so-benign dictatorship for 24 seasons and bullied the national media for generations, meekly acquiescing to her diktats had more hysterical commentators making allegations of elder abuse.

At a time when a couple’s romance, no matter the age gap, should be nobody’s business but their own, the latter concern, the idea he’s somehow vulnerable here, is being used to justify the relentlessly prurient coverage of the relationship. Merely the latest plot twist in a curious tale that reportedly began with their initial meet-cute on board a flight from Boston to Florida in 2021.

While some now dispute the accidental nature of that encounter, the pair supposedly struck up a bond that day discussing an assignment Hudson was doing for an undergraduate philosophy class at Bridgewater State University. Not long after that, Belichick broke up with his partner of 16 years and was then caught on doorbell camera footage doing a topless walk of shame from his new lover’s apartment.

What was initially just embarrassing carry-on, fecund comic fodder for stand-up routines on late-night TV, has more recently inspired faux-concerned headlines like “No fool like an old fool!”.

Bill Belichick and his partner Jordon Hudson attend an ice hockey game in North Carolina last month. Photograph: NHL Images/NHLI via Getty Images

As soon as they started dating, Hudson began driving a $75,000 Porsche. Small change compared to her more recent splurging of $8m purchasing properties around Massachusetts. An eyebrow-raising level of investment, the financial revelations lend weight to the theory he’s some lovestruck Learesque character prone to exploitation in his dotage.

[ Dave Hannigan: A trip to England offered my American sons a lesson on Irish historyOpens in new window ]

[ Could Shedeur Sanders ever really be another Tom Brady after phone faux pas and NFL draft snub?Opens in new window ]

This narrative is being peddled by media outlets savouring every moment of the soap opera, even more so because his deliberate, determined truculence made journalists’ jobs unnecessarily difficult for decades. Tabloids have even gone big on the fact her mother manages a sex shop in Provincetown, Massachusetts. No salacious detail left unreported.

“Bill’s got to get a hold of himself here,” said Peter King, retired doyen of NFL journalists. “He’s got to get a hold of this situation. This is embarrassing. It’s totally embarrassing for a guy who’s as great at his job as he is.”

Amid all this drama, Belichick is preparing to start his debut campaign as head coach of the University of North Carolina, where he recently signed a five-year deal worth €50 million. Many thought the step down to collegiate gridiron from the pros was a strange move for the septuagenarian, but even weirder still is his meddlesome girlfriend featuring so prominently in his business.

One minute she is scaring off a film crew from HBO who had contracted to document his first campaign on campus, the next prowling the sidelines with him during training, wearing a snakeskin print trench coat, matching miniskirt, and high heeled white boots.

She did look resplendent and he seemed thrilled to have her there. The rest of us? We just keep gawping.